Maggie

Mama went down that hill every morning and disappeared behind the mill gate. She wasn't the only woman who did. Many others went in the same gate and left children to get ready for school on their own, but there was a difference. Most of them went home at night to a family with a daddy at the head of the supper table. Mama didn't. We didn't have a daddy. Maybe there had been one at some time in the past, but I didn't know him. Now only Margie (my oldest sister), Elvie (the middle sister), Mama, and I lived in our house. So, I just answered the teacher's question the best way I knew how.

Mama always said we were so lucky to have the mill right down the hill because it gives so many people work. It looked like a giant warehouse. It was built of brick and had tall windows that stayed open much of the time. Someone said that with all the machinery running, the mill sounded like the ocean. We had never heard the ocean, so we didn't understand, but we knew the sound of the mill.

People were talking about a war in hushed voices, but Margie and Elvie didn't seem worried, and Mama never mentioned it, so what was it to me? A war...in Concord, North Carolina? Sometimes, somebody in my grade said their daddy went away that day to war. Everyone praised that classmate, and he was special all day. Sometimes they cried in class because their daddy wouldn't be home that night. I would have cried if Mama wouldn't have been home that night, but I never had one of those daddies, so it was okay. Mama was all we had and all we needed.

The story of Maggie begins in 1916, during WWI. Women primarily took care of the daily household responsibilities, and they were not allowed to vote. Maggie becomes a single mother of three daughters. Through deep faith and persistence, she raises and educates her daughters. Her life is founded on faith and persistence, and she passes on this foundation to family generations that follow.